#visualtextanalysis

The above image is an excerpt from the Left Bank Graffiti Wall. This was painted for visitors to the 2015 Wellington On a Plate festival, as a promotional device that would continue to mean something of importance to Wellington citizens long after the festival had finished.
I believe it was intended for the audience to see it as a celebration of Wellington’s cultural diversity, however I see it as a representation of something different.

The image speaks of how our lives have begun to revolve so much around food that we have begun to lose our identities as individuals. We are now only seen as the cultures we belong to and the specialized cuisines of these cultures. We have stopped existing as singular beings and have become one of many who are represented by the food most consumed by their populace.
The integration of vegetables into the hair of the figures in this image is suggestive of the idea that we are letting our appetites define us and dictate how the rest of society sees us, while the covering of the eyes with fruit is symbolic of the suppression of our identities as individuals.